Weekends, Past and Future

What a weekend it has been here. First there was the story of the missing airplane, then the plane was found, making it Brazil's greatest air accident ever. Our prayers are with the families--how hard it must have been to wait so long for news! Of course the other major excitement was the election yesterday. We really weren't sure what kind of turn out we'd have at church but we still had decent numbers (including visitors!). Now the election has gone into a runoff. At this point, it's hard to predict what that will mean. The one thing I know it means is four more weeks of campaigning (blech!) and heated discussions about Lula. (He's quite a polarizing figure). Anyway, keep praying about it all!

This weekend is going to be a doozy, too, though for completely different reasons. Saturday night is the wedding of two of our members, a couple who transferred from Bonoco. The church was asked to do the wedding which means, of course, that we missionaries (okay, the women) are doing the bulk of it. That's proving to be quite interesting because our wedding experience here is rather limited. We keep asking the bride her opinion and she says, "Oh, whatever is fine." None of us can imagine sitting back and having our weddings planned by committee but the bride seems to trust us completely. We have found ourselves wishing we had a Garden Ridge in town!

So that's Saturday. Sunday is a completely different event. October 12 is Children's Day, quite a large occasion, and we're going to do a church celebration of it this Sunday. Street children are common here and they often don't have any shoes, so we're using this as an opportunity to help them. We've been collecting money and shoes and are inviting all the kids we see to join us this Sunday. We have no idea what to expect but we are praying that this day will touch the lives of all involved.